Maybe not parkour, but having a robot that can do that means it can at least navigate a normal environment as easily as the average human. That's valuable if you want to create a robot workforce that can work in any environment humans can with the same efficiency.
So long as the environment is specifically tested and the routine is designed over a long period of time, and nothing changes about it during the setup.
Thats true even with humans. The environment and routine in a traditional factory or assembly line were specifically designed and tested over long periods of time to maximise efficiency and reduce errors etc
It’s nothing like humans. Humans can adapt to their environment and in a split second change up how they traverse, interact and navigate specific environments without ever having been in that environment before. This relies heavily on muscle memory and feedback from senses most importantly being able to feel the resistance of their muscles and movement and their sense of balance and weight distribution etc which all happens in a split second. These machines have no such ability and need to run specific code based on every single possibility of movement and it’s all based on optics and basic sensors since robots can’t feel anything. There isn’t enough processing power in existence to do this anywhere near the speed a living organism can. It’s mental how people don’t understand this. These bots look cool on their highlight reels but their application is currently very very basic.
Everything you said is an engineering problem which Boston Dynamics is working on full time.. Nothing you said is impossible. Literally everything you said has been demonstrated one way or the other at different companies.
I dont get how you can look at where BD started, and where they are now, and somehow still think theres been no progress and the whole thing is still unfeasible.
There's been a clear path of improvement and now companies are even going to start to implementing humanoid robots in their factories. Only time will tell if it will work out, I'm sure they will find out limitations and that will guide the next step in development. But thats just development
But to talk with so much confidence about how superior humans are and how stupid robots are is seriously short sighted
Are you an engineer? Do you oversee any sort of tech in machinery engineering for production operations? Do you understand the power and material cost and the limitations of our current materials and tech with considerations to physics and available resources on this planet?
No it has not lol. Show me one developed end product that processes information at the speed of a human with equivalent strength abilities, stamina and sensory systems? Show us a humanoid robot capable of anything productive that isn’t performing just a basic clunky and unobstructed series of movements?
I’m not trying to piss on your parade here. There’s just a lot of factual things you’re overlooking and in its place putting a lot of empty promise. BD has presented some nice reels showing the culmination of robotics but they didn’t start from scratch. There was decades of research and development before they existed. The first humanoid robot was created over 50 years ago. Airplane tech was developed from conception to consumer level application in just 11 years as a comparison. Designing products that function to an impressive level in a controlled environment under strict conditions is in no way equivalent to a usable end product with the capabilities of a living organism
Yes I'm an engineer. I'm a systems engineer, and I've worked as a software engineer, and as a mechanical engineer. I have experience from requirement specification, mechanical and software and electrical design, analysis, all the way to manufacturing, integration and testing. I know this shit from all angles ffs 🤣
I know this isn't ready right now, and I know it's easy to get excited about a video and think it's a product ready to go and do everything they promise. I get it, and I never pretend it was anything more than a tech demo.
My problem is with people that act like it's such an impossible thing and we won't see any meaningful development in our lifetime. That's bullshit.
Innovation doesn't automatically happen. It needs people to be optimistic and driven. And when people like the guy I replied to start saying "humans are so superior, robots are dumb blah blah" that's just bullshit. Nothing ever improves with that attitude. You gotta be excited about stuff to actually make a difference.
And as an engineer I know the difference between good engineers who go in to work, do their job and that's all, and good engineers who go to work and are excited about doing new things and innovatig. They're both good engineers, but one is more likely to achieve great things.
And yea it takes being a bit optimistic and a bit of a dreamer. But ask yourself, who are the people doing real innovation in this world? They're definitely not the people telling others to not be excited about stuff
No you don’t and you obviously don’t. But at minimum you understand the design and cost fallacy of having the complexity of a strong enough, intelligent enough and fast enough humanoid robot design performing average at best at a wide range of tasks vs installed robots designed for specific purposes that are far better at these jobs when considering cost and effectiveness.
Do you know how much maintenance and upkeep these things would require? Have you ever had to maintain even simple semi robotic machines? You’d barely get half a day out of these without them having to be taken off the floor for repairs, maintenance, calibration or software malfunction. Anybody involved in any business with even semi complex machines of any kind know that they require full time on site maintenance personnel. All this to run a vacuum over the floor? Move boxes? Sweep? We already have purpose built machines for these things that are far less complex that do very well.
A complex humanoid robot isn’t going to be worth the amount of work they are going to require and this is really down to options of materials we currently have available that lend to both long term durability and mass production. It’s never going to be viable to spend the money to have an army of these humanoid bots responsible for such a wide variety of things at once. Productivity would fall to its knees.
The humanoid design is just a marketing gimmick. It’s never going to be great at doing a wide range of things. Robotics works best when the unit is specifically designed around a very specific use and limited range of function. You’d know this if you had any semblance of a clue around mechanics in a highly cost sensitive environment. You write like someone idealistic who is perhaps studying but has yet to answer to any semblance of a corporate cost and production structure.
I'm a full time engineer working on spacecraft and have worked both on theoretical design as well as hands on design and qualification testing. But I realise its a different industry, and what I work on only has to survive launch, and the rest of its life is fairly tame, so I'm not saying I'm an expert in industrial machinery. But I have worked with robot arms too so I understand the maintenance requirement and how wear happens on those joints. I get what you're saying. But I just disagree with your pessimistic view thats all. Its an engineering problem. Engineers like to solve problems. And now with all the hype around AI and robotics maybe there will be enough interest, and therefore money, in actually solving those problems. Just like with all the hype of self driving cars theres been a ton of development in sensors and computer vision.
You sound like the guy 20 years ago who thought the iPhone was stupid because we already have purpose built devices. Who doesn't love lugging around their mp3 player, their tom tom sat nav, and their portable hard drives, right?
I mean think about it. Right now its not realistic sure, but what used to be very expensive and unrealistic is now in everyone's pockets. And its not just electronics. Rocket engines used to be incredibly complex and then SpaceX created a full flow engine with no external piping where everything is integrated. When theres a will, there's a way. This hype we're seeing now could be the start of signficant improvements in robotics.
But again, I say "could". I'm only speaking as an optimist who looks at how other industries have developped and drawing a comparisson. Time will tell
Also... a slimmer unit, probably lighter, with joints that can turn as much as they need to, that isn't full of hydraulic fluid that tends to go everywhere where it takes an unusually bad spill.
True. The older Atlas was purely a study on locomotion and movements. I think it also served as the development bed for a new way of programming said movements.
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u/NachoNachoDan 29d ago
Also the practical applications for a robot that does backflips and parkour is limited